Blood. Pain. Grit.
Opening her blackened hands, Isobel found only those three things in her grasp.
Varen was gone.
Her plan to banish him had worked.
The fire had vanished with him, snuffing out the moment he had ceased to exist in this world, and as they had before when she’d summoned them in the bookshop, the flames had left her unscathed.
Breathing out in a rush that caused the cinders beneath her to disperse, Isobel found herself wondering how it could have happened again.
Before, when she’d asked Reynolds why she had survived the summoned flames, he had told her that since the fire she’d created had been a dream, it had ceased to exist when the realms parted. He’d also told her that the underlying strength of Varen’s feelings for her had provided protection.
But that protection, which once shielded her from the Nocs, had been lifted. That was why Pinfeathers had been able to scar her. And why he had. So she would know.
Could that protection have somehow been reinstated?
If so, did that mean some small part of Varen—conscious or not—still hoped she was real?
Isobel wasn’t sure.
Rolling onto her back, she gazed up past the gray-powdered grilles and bumpers of the surrounding cars to where Varen’s storm unraveled.
Bleeding white, the clouds evaporated, giving way to blue.
Sunlight burned through the cascade of ash, the remnants of which floated down to light softly upon her.
Her skin prickled, alive with the sensation of pins and needles, and Isobel blinked long and slow as the car alarms continued their frantic blaring—though now without the underscoring cries of the Nocs.
Along with Varen, the crows had receded into the dreamworld, through the veil that somehow—despite its now accelerated disintegration—still managed to separate her world from his.
From somewhere far off, the howl of sirens rose, and she knew she needed to move. To get up and get out of there.
As the full weight of what she’d done came crashing over her, though, she found herself unable to lift even one limb.
She’d sent him back. Back into that world of despair. Back into his empire of shadow.
But doing so had been the only way to prevent him from bringing it all here with him.
The only way of closing the link.
Soon, she was sure, Varen would return, stronger and more malevolent than before—bent on wreaking the havoc that would bring his darkest imaginings to life. Because even if there was a small part of him that did suspect she could be real, there was an even stronger part that had lost the capacity to trust in anything other than the nothing he’d come to know so well.
The nightmare. How would it ever end if she could not reach him?
How, when she had already gone to every length, faced each monster, risking all in the process?
His darkness remained—impenetrable. And it would stay that way as long as he refused to believe her.
To believe in her.
In himself.
The thought floated up through the mire of her anguish in a whisper. As her eyes traced the open sky, she knew it was true. Reynolds had been wrong to suggest that Isobel could dispel the darkness, could stop the worst from happening, by proving herself to Varen.
That power, in the end, lay with Varen alone.
Then again, at this point, maybe Reynolds—wherever he was—would see his mistake.